Puebla
Goff, James G.
Convoked to study the "Evangelization in the Present and Future of Latin America," the Third General Conference of Latin America Bishops met in Puebla, Mexico, January 27 to February 13 this...
...it does not condemn theology of liberation, Marxism as a "methodology of analysis," nor socialism as a historical alternative...
...It is especially unhappy with the trend of the Brazilian Church, the most liberal in Latin America...
...CELAM subsequently prepared a replacement, the Working Document (WD), which delegates received shortly before leaving for Puebla...
...All but two of them, as one observer said, "seemed more interested in serving the Church then in liberating the Latin American people...
...A major turning point for the Church, Medellin lined up Catholics on the side of social change to benefit the poor...
...Although many prelates have subsequently reneged on their commitment, the Medellin documents give Church approval to those working for basic social change...
...From his new high post, with a first vice-president of the same mind (none other than Luciano Cabral Duarte, L6pez Trujillo is in a spot where he can impose his will on the Latin American Church...
...Their method is that of gradually changing the ranks of bishops to bring in more "orthodox" elements, more submissive to Vatican instructions and less critical of the country's sociopolitical situation...
...In comparison with Medellin the Puebla document is pedestrian, but it is one progressive Catholic groups feel they can live with...
...Plenary sessions for joint discussion of each section occurred only during the final days, and debate was prohibited...
...and, * Bishops who are not in agreement with the idea of evangelism as limited to the change of cultural values are to be denounced as trying to form a "parallel magisterium...
...Under the aegis of Cardinal Arns, a meeting of persons involved in pastoral institutes in Latin America was convoked for August this year in Sao Paulo...
...The "popular Church" or "the Church that Is Being Born from the People" should be discouraged...
...There was no condemnation of liberation theology as such...
...Meanwhile, conservative members have been making advances in their goal to take control of the Latin American church hierarchy...
...The secretary-general denied press credentials to half a dozen journalists-including the distinguished Catholic writer Mary MacEoin, correspondent for Noticias Aliadas and Latinoamerica Press-for "lack of objectivity" in their reporting...
...Despite the release during the Puebla meeting by the magazine Uno Mas Uno (Mexico City) of a confidential letter from L6pez Trujillo to Brazilian Archbishop Luciano Cabral Duarte boasting of his manipulation of the preparations for Puebla, the CELAM directorate-overloaded with conserJulylAugust 1979 43update * update update * update vative bishops-at a subsequent meeting in Los Teques, Venezuela, elected L6pez Trujillo president of CELAM...
...The Curia is not pleased with the thought of a majority of the world's Catholics following a radical or even progressive line...
...To be sure, John Paul II said that if the theology of liberation limited itself to the political or scientific fields it would become "a false theory," a statement with which all theologians of liberation would agree...
...Among those excluded were: Sergio M6ndez Arceo (Cuernavaca), Samual Ruiz (Chiapas), Miguel Obando y Bravo (Managua) and Pedro Casalddliga (Sao Feliz...
...The ONIS priests quote three Puebla articles, including No...
...ist Trojan Horse within the Church...
...Instead of doing so, they humbly contributed to helping the bishops commit fewer errors...
...As the Brazilian theologian Clodovis Boff said in a scathing critique, the PD proposed 41update * update . update . update nothing less than the creation of a new Christendom...
...In contrast to the tightly controlled CELAM distribution of information, CENCOS held press conferences several times a day, offered open information and showed an attitude of respect for press freedom...
...Catholic lay persons-as well as priests and bishops-who took Medellin seriously were arrested, tortured, exiled or assassinated...
...Entirely new are an overview-analysis of the entangled web of interconnections between the two countries, labor migration tana is a member of the ultrarightist TFP (Tradition, Family, Property) movement...
...Joseph Hanrahan, an Irish Redemptorist priest, was named to head the prelature of Araguaia...
...Nevertheless, the elections did send some outstanding liberal bishops to Puebla: Oscar Romero (San Salvador), Luis Bambar6n (Chimbote), Adriano Hip6lito (Novo IguacO) and Paulo Evaristo Arns (Sao Paulo) among others...
...Treatment of Indians, campesinos and workers was omitted...
...The Pope named 12 Latin American bishops, all conservative or extremely conservative, including two who hold the rank of General in the armies of their countries-Cardinal Anibal Mufioz Duque (Colombia) and Bishop Alcides Mendoza Castor (Peru...
...Those responsible for preparing the Puebla Conference-the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM), under the direction of Colombian bishop Alfonso L6pez Trujillo, general secretary (1972-1979)-as Frei Betto observes, felt fearfully impressed by this panorama...
...The ONIS priest group fo Peru, for example, issued a statement in June backing the public school teachers on strike and denouncing the military government's economic policy...
...FROM MEDELLIN TO PUEBLA The struggle in the Puebla conference was unleashed by the Second General Conference held in Medellin, Colombia a decade earlier...
...Local observers see this appointment as an effort to make the Dominican Fathers leave the Concecao do Araguaia region where they have opposed the military officials' land and social policies...
...From the Vatican, Cardinal Baggio has enormous power over the bishops and in the new CELAM President he has a lieutenant ready to implement his policies...
...More Christian then the testimony of the bishops in their conference...
...The book brings together for the first time revised and updated materials from past NACLA Reports on border industries, Mexican labor struggles, and rural underdevelopment...
...He is deprived of his freedom to choose "the road to his personal fulfillment" and lacks "the right to religious freedom, which is the base of all freedom...
...In addition, CELAM and the Vatican appointed several representatives of European funding agencies as delegates...
...Puender comes from a family closely related to German Christian Democracy and is a member of the Focolare movement...
...They worked well and would have been able to produce a document ten times more brilliant and perfect than the one we did...
...An information center under the aegis of Mexico City's CENCOS was set up in Puebla where these people provided information and reports for the bishops...
...The naming of delegates apart from those elected by the Latin American Church was another method of control...
...Since the conference ended some church groups have used its final document to defend progressive socioeconomic programs...
...Through his contacts with conservative bishops in each country, L6pez Trujillo had been able to prevent the election of many progressive bishops as delegates...
...PesNEW MEXICO BOOK PUBLISHED NACLA has just published Beyond the Border, an examination of the social, political and economic ties between Mexico and the United States...
...Based on consultation with the CELAM secretariat and the papal nuncio in Brazil, Msgr...
...It condemns "economic liberalism," calling it a "materialistic praxis" which is "blind to the demands of social justice" and "at the service of the international imperialism of money with which many governments are associated and are forgetting their obligations for the common good...
...Between Medellin and Puebla many Christians have been victims of persecution and martyrdom...
...However, the conservative sector of the hierarchy has strongly opposed the appropriation by liberation theologians of Marxism's tools of analysis and its insight into the dynamics of the social process...
...The JulylAugust 1979 bishops in 1968 voted to break away from identification with the wealthy landowning class and to choose identification with the poor and oppressed...
...42 NACLA Report ;E_update* update . update * update Curia named some 20 members...
...The WD was an improvement, but it still had a spiritualistic twist, used apologetic language and had a doctrinal dogmatic outline that ignored the contributions of Latin American theologians and included those of certain Europeans...
...Besides reducing human existence "to the development of material forces of production," for classical Marxism "the person is not originally a product of his consciousness...
...The meeting was cancelled and those who had been invited, whether they had been accepted or not, are being harassed...
...Since it was not a CELAM activity and was oriented along progressive lines, Cardinal Baggio objected to it in a letter to the episcopal conferences in Latin America...
...Of the CENCOS group, Cardinal Arns said: I think these theologians were the clearest, most Christian testimony at the whole Pueblo meeting...
...Even more serious is the evident intention to increase the number of conservatives in the Brazilian hierarchy...
...THE PUEBLA DOCUMENT The Conference focused on producing a statement or document and the process was a controlled one...
...Many bishops' conferences, especially that of Brazil, severely criticized the PD...
...CONSERVATIVE SCHEMES L6pez Trujillo and Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, Prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops and head of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America-one of the three Puebla Conference presidents, the others being Cardinals Aloisio Lorscheider of Brazil and Ernesto Corripio of Mexico-used some questionable practices to manipulate and control the Puebla meeting...
...The Vatican Since Puebla, the Latin American bishops still have not reached consensus about the Church's proper role in politics...
...His will is essentially that of the conservative Vatican Curia which sees Latin America's Catholic population as becoming the majority of the Church by the year 2 000...
...In CELAM's view: * Conflicts with the state should be avoided...
...Convoked to study the "Evangelization in the Present and Future of Latin America," the Third General Conference of Latin America Bishops met in Puebla, Mexico, January 27 to February 13 this year...
...Carmine Rocco, the naming of new bishops seems to 44 follow a consistent line-the installation of safe, conservative figures who will not rock the Church-state boat...
...Despite their exclusion from the Conference, dozens of Latin American theologians and representatives of grassroots communities went to Puebla...
...44, that criticize the Latin American governments' way of dealing with organized labor...
...The tactic is one that could succeed...
...For Cardinal Baggio and Bishop L6pez Trujillo, it is essential to control the Brazilian Bishops' Conference...
...Behind the innocuous sounding agenda a major struggle in the Catholic Church of this continent was going on to determine the Church's role in Latin American society...
...Puebla also condemned "classical Marxism" for its "collectivist, almost messianic vision" of humanity...
...The Puebla document gets approval from Clodovis Boff for three of its condemnations and three of its non-condemnations: it condemns "capitalist liberalism," the violence of states, and the "doctrine of National Security...
...Each participant was confined to one of 21 different commissions, each of which was assigned to draw up one section of the final document...
...They have also given some impetus to what has come to be known as the "theology of liberation...
...The theology of liberation should be condemned as a kind of Marx...
...As social injustices and conflicts became sharper, the people struggling for revolutionary change have sometimes turned to violence...
...The CELAM secretary general sharply reduced the number of periti (theological experts or consultants) in attendance and required that they have Vatican approval...
...In all these appointments the Brazilian hierarchy's special regional commissions named to advise the Vatican on candidates for h-,hops were ignored...
...Manuel Pestana was named bishop of Anapolis (Goias...
...he is instead constituted by his social existence...
...The secretary general's Preparatory Document (PD) for Puebla, with a triumphalist view of the Church in Latin America, proposed a "division of work" with the state looking out for the material welfare of Latin Americans while the Church, through its evangelization, would create a "culture" founded on explicitly Christian ethical and moral values...
...The CELAM Secretariat sought to steer clear of another Medellin capable of stimulating a politically progressive pastoral activity...
...Several recent events indicate the direction Baggio and L6pez Trujillo intend to follow...
...there are presently some 50 appointments to be made to Brazilian dioceses...
...In general, it goes beyond functionalist analysis and tends toward a structuralist interpretation of the Latin American situation...
...Three recent examples are these: * Reinhard Puender, a German diocesan priest, was named bishop of Coroata (Maranha State...
...The PD showed greater concern for the secularization of Latin American culture than for the misery of great masses of people exploited by the capitalist system...
...Working from the position of the poor and oppressed, liberation theologians believe theology has to be done in relation to a specific historical situation, and socio-economic analysis is as essential to their work as biblical exegesis...
...POST PUEBLA Progressive groups in Latin America are already buttressing their positions by appeals to the Puebla document...
Vol. 13 • July 1979 • No. 4
